Always, Always
by Runawaymetaphor
Summary: She could forgive him anything but this. She could forgive him anyone but this.


**Always, Always**

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><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>_Because sometimes, just sometimes . . . I like to annoy my friend Alpha Flyer._

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><p>She has three full hours to seethe before he gets home from teaching. Three full hours to deposit their daughter with the girl's grandfather on the other side of San Francisco, come home, and work herself into a blinding, bubbling rage.<p>

She could forgive him anything but this.

She could forgive him anyone but this.

As she paces the large living room of their apartment, she turns their six years together over and over in her head.

Her_ immediate_ understanding- her crisp, clear understanding- that it didn't start until they got home fails to bring her any comfort. Likewise, the possibility that it may have started the month, the day, they were home- that he has been meeting _Her_ for the last two years- is not especially painful.

She will find it all vaguely sad, years from now, the idea that he may have sustained himself with brief interludes crammed into Her over-wrought schedule. That he unquestionably waited for Her, time after time, to return to Earth from some diplomatic mission; looking up at the stars he loved with new-found jealousy for stealing Her away from him.

But today, this isn't even a footnote to her anger. Her mind's eddies of fear and analysis churning over the years they were on the ship.

She's known for three years that he'd previously spent one night with Her. He'd told her as much, just after they were married. She'd had four glasses of wine and they were both laughing and telling jokes. She made some crude remark, and he'd delivered the fact as a punch line; a laughable little story that he'd once slept with Her.

She can still remember sitting on the couch in their shared quarters then, her head spinning in a new way. All of the vague fears, the dull knot that always existed in her stomach when she looked at them together, tightening with a rapidity her inebriated consciousness shouldn't have been capable of. But even after that, she'd pushed down her worry.

It was one night, after all. One night with Her, years before she'd married him. Five years of distance was enough, she'd told herself.

And so for the next ten months out there, she'd swallowed the constant nervousness. Closing her eyes when someone walked through engineering, talking about something that happened on the bridge. Silently noting to herself, time and again, that the retreating voices always, _always_, mentioned Her name within a beat of his.

The way she had to stop herself from over-analyzing the soft looks Harry Kim would give her. Pausing quietly when Chakotay would sometimes avert his eyes from her gaze, as though he'd seen something he couldn't tell her.

And this is what she _hates_ him for now: not for the affair; not for the actual sex. But for all the time before this that she spent with the two of them on a cramped ship, constantly holding her breath while the two of them worked ten decks away from her view. That all of that is now painfully real in a way that it never was before.

And this is what she hates Her for now. Her husband always, always feeling like he belonged to someone else. Before they started dating. After they were married. When Miral came. It never mattered. Because, in all that time, nothing really changed.

When he finally gets home, he has his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a bottle of wine in one hand. He removes his coat, draping it over the rack, before joining her in the living room. As soon as he sees her face, her posture, he stops dead in his tracks, his expression immediately concerned.

This is the man she married, though not the one she first met. Concerned; kind; patient. But never angry, never passionate in rage or in love. Because those things belong to someone else. From the heights of his longing to the depths of his hatred, those things all belong to Her.

"B'Elanna?" he asks, stepping closer to her.

She has been imagining this moment for three hours. Has written elegant monologues in her head and pictured slamming her fists into his chest and face. And yet, standing in front of him, none of those things come.

"I know, Tom," she whispers, her dark eyes staring into his blue ones.

She expects an argument - denials and then recriminations. Maybe even tears. Anything but his concerned face staying roughly the same except for the tinge of apology in his eyes. "I'm sorry."

An admission, plain and simple. She doesn't even have to show him the strand of hair- the single strand of auburn hair- she found across her pillow.

"Where's Miral?"

The question only dimly finds her; his cool, pensive face and even tone making her think that this is all an illusion of some kind.

"B'Elanna," he says, this time firmer, "_where's Miral_?"

"With your father."

He simply nods, looking around the space. Perhaps mentally deciding what items he needs for the night.

"I'll be the one to leave," he offers. "You should stay here."

Something about the dutiful way he speaks to her snaps her out of her momentary trance. She fixes him with cold, shining eyes.

"I can't imagine she'll let you stay with her. Not good for the Admiral's image."

His eyes shift from her face for only a second; an indication, however small, that she's wounded him by touching her finger to some version of the truth.

"Kathryn isn't-"

"_Don't_," she hisses. "Do not _ever_ say _that name_ to me."

In the end, she is the one to leave, allowing him to take Miral, if only for a few days.

She goes to Chakotay's home in Montana because she can't think of any place better. Likely, it helps that Chakotay once hated Tom. She wants to look into someone's eyes that show the same disgust she currently feels.

Chakotay and Seven admit her quickly into their entryway, Chakotay embracing her before he shows her up the stairs. He's kind and warm, just the way she remembers him being. Until she tells him about the details of Tom's affair, and he gets a far away look in his eyes.

And immediately, she regrets coming here, to him. Because as angry as Chakotay is at Tom, as he anguished as he is for her, he also understands what Tom feels. Despite all his loyalty and his goodness, Chakotay would leave everything in his life behind in the blink of an eye if it meant getting Her to look at him that way. No matter if the price of it would be Seven one day finding a strand of hair that's too red to be her own.

Settling heavily into the bed of guest room, she closes her eyes to block out Chakotay's outline in the doorway. The knowledge - the dark, looming knowledge - that for him, for both of them, it was always, always another woman.

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><p><em>Darling, will your love be mine forever <em>  
><em>Always, always <em>  
><em>Will you keep those vows we made together <em>  
><em>Always, always <em>  
><em>Will your love be as strong <em>  
><em>If my dreams should all go wrong <em>  
><em>Always, always<em>

-lyrics by Joyce McCord, performed by Dolly Parton


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